Veronica’s Germany: Why Not Move to Berlin?

by Veronica Louis

Photo: Veronica Louis

January 6th, 2010… It was the eve of my four-month solo adventure through the south of India. I did not know how I felt because I did not know what to expect. So instead I braced myself for the unexpected. And that served me well. One month into my adventure, I met Stephen and then Eun Sun… Two beautiful and kindhearted souls who both happened to be from Berlin. While paying them a long over due visit in Berlin in 2014, I just happened to fall in love with their city.

One event leads to the next, putting forth a fortunate chain of reactions, bringing me to this point… the day of my departure to Berlin for a year on a work-holiday visa. And yet, unlike before my departure to India, my feelings this time around tottered from uneasy to apprehensive.

Now at the age where I’m fully aware of the weight of all my decisions, I started wondering about the “Why?” Why was I moving to Berlin? What good reason did I have to move to Berlin? The fact that I couldn’t come up with an important enough reason gnawed at me. Reasons like: Because Berlin is an amazing and eclectic city where one can really creatively thrive seemed frivolous, as Montreal was just as awesome and just as much of a creative hub. Thankfully, my good friend Gabriel reminded me of the quintessential. “Why not?” he asked me. *Light bulb* And I was like, “Yeeaaaaah! Why not? Why the hell not?” We spend so much of our time trying to justify stuff we viscerally want to do, being on the defensive, when perhaps we should just nonchalantly shrug our shoulders and say: “Why not?” Too many opportunities are missed when we’re busy yielding to expectation.

And with that in mind, I boldly go where many have gone before, to the land of Deutsch, in a city that literally tore down a wall, inspiring me to tear down my overbearing wall of logic and instead embrace the inexplicable reason of the “Why not?”